Crazy Eddie is coming back to Utah.
So are Eddie's father, Mr. Muldoon, and crusty old woodsman Rancid Crabtree (you'd be crusty, too, if you bathed with the same regularity Rancid does - once every Leap Year).Author/humorist Patrick F. McManus, whose books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list and whose laugh-provoking articles have appeared such publications as the New York Times, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and TV Guide, scored a big hit with theatergoers in 15 stages with his 1992 stage production, "A Fine and Pleasant Misery: the Humor of Patrick F. McManus."
The one-man show, with actor Tim Behrens portraying roughly 15 different McManus characters (including young Pat himself), has inspired a brand-new stage play: "McManus in Love." It opened the first of three one-night stands in northern Utah last night in Ogden (see review on Page W3), with additional performances tonight in Provo and Saturday night in Logan, followed by a six-performance engagement March 18-22 at the Off Broadway Theatre downtown Salt Lake City.
Behrens, who has forged an entirely new career out of performing McManus's homespun humor, said during an interview last week from Spokane, Wash., that "McManus in Love" is different from the earlier stage show.
"This is all new material and most of it, 90 percent, is unpublished. This will be all new and fresh for McManus fans," he said.
While "A Fine and Pleasant Memory" was adapted from anecdotes and stories culled from several of the author's books, "this was written entirely for the stage," Behrens said.
Prior to taking the McManus comedies on the road, Behrens had major roles in a number of plays, such as James in "That Championship Season," George in "Same Time, Next Year" and Dr. Emerson in "Whose Life Is It, Anyway?" plus doing audio book recordings for Spokane-based Books in Motion (everything from Sherlock Holmes and Mark Twain to "The War of the Worlds").
With very little scenery and just a few simple props (everything he needs can be packed into one Toyota van), Behrens draws on the power of imagination - and McManus' vivid writing - to keep audiences entertained.
"In the first one, young Pat (based loosely on McManus himself) and his friend Crazy Eddie, were growing up and wanted to become mountain men - except they had one stumbling block: They were afraid of the dark," said Behrens.
"Now they're a little older and after confronting and overcoming their fear of the dark, they've decided that the next wilderness they're going to conquer is . . . girls.
"They want to start dating, and they look for the secrets to dating and romance by seeking advice from all the stock McManus characters," said Behrens.
Needless to say, a great deal of this "advice" is not all that useful, or even correct. Such as one minor problem when they get "sex" confused with "sax."
"So they gather all this advice, then in the second act we see them actually putting it into practice and this is where the trouble begins. You know, your first date will warp your personality forever, and we'll take the audience on Pat and Eddie's first date - on the back of a bicycle to an old Randolph Scott western . . . that has been replaced at the last minute by a sneak preview of a Dracula movie," he said.
Behrens noted that portraying all of the various McManus characters with only a few costumes and props requires rapid timing and a great deal of imagination on the part of the audience.
Behrens said that the success of the McManus shows is due to a combination of the right material and getting the audience to participate.
"We pile all of these wonderful images into their minds and their only release is the laughter. Pat uses double-vision in his writing - looking at the same situation from two perspectives. In the first show, `Pat' told about building an airplane on top of the barn roof. It was a six-hour project. The lad envisioned it as a Boeing 727 but his mother thinks it looks like an ugly privy somehow perched on top of the roof. The audience sees it from both sides and, after trying to hold it in, begins laughing," Behrens said.
"In this show, you'll see Pat taking Melba Peachbottom on his very first date. Pat sees Melba as the most beautiful girl in the world, while Melba's father sees her as this lovely daughter being picked up by an awkward boy," he noted.
McManus himself sometimes travels with the show, but not this time. Both Behrens and the author's publicist said that McManus is in the process of changing publishers. He's switching over to Simon & Schuster, one of the biggest publishers in the industry, and is busily racing the deadline for his next new book.
Among McManus' previous best-sellers have been "The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw," "Real Ponies Don't Go Oink," "The Good Samaritan Strikes Again" "They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?" and "How I Got This Way."
His "A Fine and Pleasant Misery," also featuring Behrens, played 225 performances in 15 states.
Behrens said the production mainly plays in rural areas around the West and Midwest.
"We'll never play Los Angeles. We avoid Southern California, Florida and the big cities like New York and Chicago. The rest of the country sells pretty well, but you need a whole gob of money to advertise the show in the bigger cities," he said.
But in places like Libby, Mont., audiences really get into the show.
"I mentioned Rancid Crabtree and the show came to a standstill in Libby when someone in the audience yelled out that they KNEW Rancid. The audience becomes an accomplice in this. Pat's writing leaves a lot of space for the audience's imagination to fill in the details. I just change my voice and posture and movements. There are no costume changes," Behrens said.
"Pat is very fastidious about how he puts the show together," Behrens said. "I've learned that creative writing is not just writing, it's RE-writing and Pat continually rewrites," Behrens noted. "But he allowed me to contribute to this second piece because I knew the characters so well."
Behrens also noted that in a one-man show, the audience itself becomes his playmate. "I have to open myself up all the time. You cannot hide. You cannot shut down. The audience is intimately involved with the performance."
Behrens was born in New York City, but his parents left there when radio was dying. His mother came to Hollywood and became involved with the early days of the "I Love Lucy" show and later worked with "Dragnet" and several Jack Webb projects.
"I inherited my voice from my dad, Frank Behrens. He could read something cold in whatever voice they wanted. He could imitate political figures and others. I have a tape of him doing a fight scene, imitating someone like Joe Louis and 32 distinctly different characters," he said.
Behrens has known McManus for 16 years. "He was my adviser in the MFA program in creative writing at Eastern Washington. I was his last student. After looking at my writing, he told me to stick to acting," Behrens said.
"He kept threatening to write a one-man show like Hal Holbrook's `Mark Twain Tonight.' So finally, I went out and booked a theater in his home town of Sandpoint, Idaho, and put down a deposit. McManus was shocked to find his play listed later as part of the theater's next season - so he wrote the play.
"On opening night, Pat came down to my dressing room and said he would walk out if there were no laughs. It turned out to be a crazy night. There were people standing in the street and we had to open the side doors so they could hear.
"The next morning, Western State University wanted the show for Dad's Day and we began touring it in 1992, then we took it off the road and refined it and mounted a serious tour in 1993."